awayuq

old sayings, new pursuits

When I was little, if my brother or I asked for something my mother considered ridiculous, she would say "You need another X like you need another hole in your head". What with weaving, knitting, spinning, sewing, and occasional explorations of historic textiles, laces and braiding, I often say to myself: "You need another thread hobby like you need another hole in your head." Really-- what's the point of getting enthusiastic about another thing only to find that I have no time to do it? Be that as it may, I have a series of quick questions for you:

what is more portable than knitting?
what kind of lace is never in danger of unraveling?
how do you make absolutely free-form circles curves and loops with only one basic stitch?

Tatting. My fascination with tatting dates back to the time I could still stand upright under a dining room table. Rummaging through the yarn closet, I found a little booklet that had baby clothes and instructions for knitting, crochet and tatting. There were bonnets, booties, and lace gloves. I wish I had this booklet now--I can't even remember what company published it-- from the diagrams, I taught myself to crochet and later to knit. The pictures of lacy tatted things were indescribably appealing, but I had no shuttle and the diagrams made no sense to me. I decided tatting was not for me, and happily continued other pursuits.

Right now, if I had to give a name to my foremost textile passion, I would say "lace". Rather than any particular technique, I am interested in delicate open fabric. Gauze weaves, lace weaves, knitted lace, hemstitching. Knitting has held less fascination for me recently, and I decided this summer I want to learn something entirely new. Hence, tatting. I couldn't find shuttles or books at any LYS, so I mail ordered a few different kinds--luckily tatting shuttles can be very inexpensive. A ball of mercerized cotton from the weaving stash, and there you have it. I sat down with a beginner's book one day, when I had plenty of time, and tried to teach myself the knots. The memory of absolutely incomprehensible diagrams gave me some trepidation, but the intervening years must have done *some* good to my brain, because it took about 5 minutes to figure out what was supposed to be happening. Imagine. All these years I've steered clear of tatting because I figured it was just too difficult, and it turns out the whole thing is based on one knot. One. Off to collect as many tatted edging patterns as I can find.

ram dass and knitting

A friend of mine told me this story yesterday and he didn't even realize how funny it was. Maybe you'll find it amusing...

When Ram Dass was lecturing at Harvard, he included in his talks descriptions and references to various bizarre mental effects of a variety of drugs. He could always tell by scanning the room exactly who had partaken of which substance, because the people who had experienced what he was talking about had a very different look than the ones for whom it was all a remote theoretical case. There was a grey-haired older woman in his lectures who always sat right in the front row, and knitted through everything he said. Every time he looked around after describing some psychadelic effect, he could see that she was right with him. The gleam in her eye was unmistakeable.

One day after class he had an opportunity to speak to her.
"So," he said, "have you ever taken acid?"
"Oh no," she replied.
"But-- every time I describe these psychadelic effects you appear to know exactly what I'm talking about, as if you'd experienced it yourself."
She nodded.
"well-- how can that be, if you've never take drugs?"
She answered, "I crochet."

what happened?

Several things. Most notably, I took my Dad to Europe. He has his 70th birthday this summer, and I'm going to be gone on the actual date, so this was a Father's Day/Happy Birthday gift from me to him.
Here we are at our last dinner together in Paris. Dad is by nature a rather unemotive person, but I am pretty sure he had a good time. He had never been out of North America before, so this was a very special occasion. We spent time in Paris and in Prague (our name is Czech and we had long talked about visiting the Czech Republic). Other travelers might have seen twice as many things as we did in the same amount of time, but we were happy just being together and exploring new places.

After he flew home, I stayed in Europe. My boss arrived and we did some museum work for a couple weeks, in Holland and in Sweden. I'd like to mention that the Museum of Worldculture in Göteborg, Sweden, has a fantastic collection of Peruvian textiles. Also a sophisticated storage system, with large aluminum frames and screens so that all the textiles can lie flat. We were only able to see a few examples, but it was enough to make me want to go back! There was a long long braided belt with a fancy interlacing color pattern; lots of embroidery, and an incredible mantle made entirely out of cross-knit looping.

Because of all this travel, planning for it beforehand, finishing up a semester of Spanish class and miscellaneous other things, creative production has been pretty much at a standstill. I did make two dresses for the trip, out of crazy polyester prints. It's really true, polyester dries quickly and doesn't wrinkle! However, sewing it is like trying to tie a knot in an eel, and wearing it is something I'd only do for short periods of time, or when utility overrides comfort, as when traveling. An additional reason for the lack of postings is that a long-submerged obsession is once again prominent in my life. I'll show you a small example:

This is Elsi in Prague, wearing a new handstitched dress. I've been exercising my pattern drafting and handsewing skills on small clothes for small characters. I'd forgotten how much I love it. On the trip I did sewing instead of knitting in the evenings and found it relaxing and rewarding. Many feelings are at work in me about this-- one of the primary ones is "you should be ashamed of yourself, playing with dolls at your age!" To which I say... Well, you know, it's actually a lot harder than it appears to draft patterns for tiny bodies and make clothes that hang right and aren't too bulky and all that. Besides which, there is a long tradition of adult women costuming dolls for various reasons: as momentos of special occasions, to replicate precious outfits for nostalgia's sake, or as models to distribute fashion examples to others. I am very picky about my dolls, and their clothes must meet high standards, so in fact this "play" is quite a challenge. And I get to practice pattern drafting in manageable sizes.

That's the nutshell version of the recent past. Looking ahead, I'll be home for a couple weeks, and then gone for probably two months. This time I'll be in a remote village without e-mail access, without even postal mail, so blogging will be highly irregular and regrettably infrequent. However, I appeal to all my friends to be patient, because come fall I'm going to have a lot to say!